Reflections on Failure

It's taken me a week to distance myself enough from Smartsurfaces to write this entry without a strong desire to rant and curse more than usual. Despite my perhaps sullen appearance during last Friday's critique, I want to emphasize that I'm not as pissed off as I appeared; I'm disappointed.

I want this post to be as unambiguous and truthful as possible. We Failed. There is no getting around it, and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. John has been saying all semester "the product is learning" and this was thrown around on friday as justification that our team succeeded. It is not. I learned a great deal this semester but I dont think it was necessary to burn through three-thousand dollars to produce a non-functioning thing, then argue that because we did just that in the process of learning, we succeeded. Our failure was one of wasted opportunity to see the realization of our concept.

Why did we fail? Were we over-ambitious? Did we spend too much time investing in concept instead of execution? Did systemic incompatibilities between members doom us from the get-go? Perhaps and perhaps not; I don't know for certain, Mr Phillips' surveys might clarify this in the future. From my perspective in the final days of the course, our group suffered most from incompatible investment. For Damien and Z, this is their senior design project, for Marc it was a pass-fail course.

Differences in Investment were most apparent in the hours group members were contributing to the project. Some members simply went home early, claiming they did not work past a certain arbitrary hour. Other's stayed all night to complete the task they had set themselves. Personally, I begged for extensions twice so I could focus on SmartSurfaces, and write my Russian papers on the weekends.

Towards the end of the week, this was becoming a blatant source of friction, making cooperation between members more difficult. Between technical glitches and lack of sleep, our group was suffering significant setbacks, coupled with the persistence of ambivalence we seemed to be burning at both ends.

The day of critique was pretty awful. We had succeeded in created the structure, but none of the "smart" elements were there. It was a big blow to our group morale to see zero synergy between the elements that had taken so long to construct, and the electronic brains of it all. After spending all night fussing with the new margaret board, Damien and I were adamant about it working. We wrote a quick bit of code to turn on the LED's, trying to breath some bit of life into SIMON's shell. It was a futile attempt-

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I had hoped that when this project was complete, we would all have something to brag about, "I made that". Unfortunately, this is not the case. I feel fairly accomplished in having tackled some major problems and designing solutions despite the fact that they were not visible or employed during critique. Having invested so much time into this course, and given the rather disappointing outcome, I think some unapologetic bragging about what I contributed and learned in the process of attempting the final project is in order.

The Motor System:

Yeah, this was a pain in the neck. However, The challange was really rewarding. Damien and I worked together to create initial designs and worked through the entire process together. We produced drawings, 3d models, several prototypes, technical drawings and finally a functioning drive system. I am especially proud of being told the week of crit that our drive system would never work by a mechanical engineer at toyota, and proving other wise.

It Works- up your's Toyota!

Margaret Board aka Ghetto Peggy Board

I think for being put together the night before, this was a pretty impressive circuit. Not to mention we used only what we could forage, while the peggy board cost over $200, and for our use both served the same function-

CNC Galore!

Perhaps it functions to underscore the complexity of what we were attempting to do, but I am pretty proud of our group for making use of just about every bit of manufacturing technology we had at our disposal. The laser cutters were used to produce numerous gear mechanisms and drive system prototypes. I designed parts for both the 3-axis mill and the circuit board printer at A&D, and with the help of Rachel and Damien probably logged about 20 to 30 hours of production and tooling time on the mill. Marc Operated the WaterJet and Router in the FabLab to cut out our steel gears and SIMON's polycarbonate skin.

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What I'm taking away from this course

• Trust is a two way door. It is not enough for part of a group to simply trust the other and expect work to be shared or even complete. Trust has to be established by the behaviors of group members, not simply added to the mix to solve underlying problems. Reciprocation is not a given in group work: you can get burned-
• Being more sensitive to other's ideas fosters group dynamic. Working in smaller groups or one-on-one with Damien for example, helped me to appreciate alternative approaches. In large group's it feels like everyone is vying to be the clearest voice, or you sink to the background. By being less insensitive during our large group meetings things went smoother and the sense of combativeness faded.
• Breaking down communication barriers between disciplines by finding a shared language. Again, I think this was illustrated most clearly by working with Damien and our use of Illustrator to communicate our ideas. Using visual language to communicate was much more effective than 'talking it out'.
• Simultaneously, while some of my most pessimistic notions of group-work have been confirmed, I feel much better prepared for future group-work in knowing what behaviors to avoid and which to pursue.